Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Here is the cliché, the received wisdom: Kurosawa Akira's Rashomon was the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. That it won the festival's grand prize seems in retrospect to be a given: it is one of the finest and most important films ever made, its influence incalculable. So, what was surprising? It was, after all, accepted for the competitive category and therefore should have had as much chance as any other of the 29 films in competition. True, it was up against some stiff competition, with films by well-known directors like George Cukor, Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and up-and-coming filmmakers like Elia Kazan and Robert Bresson. One-third of the films were English-language, postwar European cinema still recovering from the devastation of the war. The beginning of the notion of "surprise" winner comes with reportage by film historian Tino Balio who notes that it "slipped into the festival unheralded" by the festival director to make "the representation as wide as possible. Members of the jury knew nothing about the picture or the director." (Balio 2010: 118) But this brings up another issue: the "surprise" extended not just to the festival-goers who knew nothing about the film or its director, but to the Japanese themselves"-- Provided by publisher.

Wiley Frontlist Obook All English 2022